Homepage / Academy Catalog / Adaptive Leadership for Faithful Change
Adaptive Leadership for Faithful Change
Brought to you by the Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement at Seattle University in partnership with Faith+Lead at Luther Seminary, discover a practical guide for religious and values-based leaders navigating change that familiar solutions can't solve.
About this Course
Many of the challenges facing today's congregations and organizations aren't problems with a clear fix—they're adaptive challenges that call for new learning, honest reflection, and a willingness to see old patterns in a new light.
What You’ll Be Able to Do:
Adaptive Leadership for Faithful Change offers religious and values-based leaders a practical, six-module introduction to adaptive leadership. Participants learn to tell technical problems apart from adaptive challenges; explore how authority, fear, resistance, and hope shape their communities; and map the systems, constraints, and strengths already at work in their context. Along the way, spiritual practices and guided reflection help connect this work to personal vocation and communal mission, building the capacity to lead—and sustain—faithful change.
This course was produced through a partnership between the Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement at Seattle University and Faith+Lead at Luther Seminary. CEIE provides in-person and online educational opportunities in a commitment to ecumenical and religious engagement, spiritual and indigenous pathways, and cultural wisdom in an effort to Engage, Learn, Grow, and Lead. Faith+Lead provides nondegree educational resources that combine trustworthy theological education, community, spiritual practices, and formation to meet the 21st-century challenges of the church.
Modules
Seeing Beneath the Surface: Problems, Challenges, and Vocation
In this module, you will:
- Distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges using course dyads.
- Develop your vocational sensibilities.
- Identify a problem in your context.
Embracing the Human Dynamics of Change
In this module, you will:
- Understand the impact and importance of confidants, champions, bystanders, and saboteurs.
- Practice curiosity and appreciation for human differences and dynamics.
- Identify the human responses to adaptive challenges expressed in authority, fear, resistance, hope, and vocation, which shape both leadership and a community's response to adaptive challenges and change.
Mapping the System: Culture, Patterns, and Constraint
In this module, you will:
- Explain how systems shape organizational culture through formal structures, informal practices, feedback loops, and shared identity.
- Develop an appreciation for interconnectedness.
- Map visible and hidden patterns shaping a leadership challenge in their own context, recognizing where a system is stuck, strained, dying, or ready for learning.
Missional Vocation and the Gift of Constraint
In this module, you will:
- Interpret systems theory in the light of ecclesiological frameworks, interpreting how identity, tradition, polity, and mission shape adaptive possibilities.
- Develop a mindset of appreciative inquiry by examining strengths and life-giving practices in your community.
- Identify constraints that create conditions for faithful innovation by slowing the discernment process and creating opportunities for action.
The Beautiful Team: An Architecture of Adaptive Leadership
In this module, you will:
- Interpret course core dyads within a larger adaptive web to recognize how conflict, resistance, fear, hope, authority, and vocation interact within integrated adaptive change.
- Reflect on adaptive capacity to determine what needs attention in your context.
- Use the Beautiful Team framework to assess where a team or community is strong, strained, stuck, or emerging.
Creative Emergence: Adaptive Leadership and Faithful Experimentation
In this module, you will:
- Understand the importance of the "Leap of Faith" in leading your community to adaptive actions in uncertain circumstances and the value of iterative adaptive actions for creating a built-to-change culture.
- Integrate your missional vocation and organizational ecology to inform your captive actions.
- Identify how curiosity, truth-telling, and experimentation break open the course dyads in ways that prioritize a community's strengths, resilience, and emergent vision.
One-time purchase
$55
With Faith+Lead Membership
$0*
Get a free public display license to use for group study.
$0*
*by joining Faith+Lead Membership for just $19.95 per month
- Modules:
6 Modules
- Format:
Self-Paced, On-Demand
- Access:
Lifetime Access
Get to Know Your Instructors
Kara Markell
The Rev. Dr. Kara Markell is the assistant director of the Seattle University Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement. She has also worked as a pastor at United Christian Church in Renton, WA and Lake Washington Christian Church in Kirkland, WA, among others.
Her experience as a teacher and workshop leader include time with Seattle University, Northern Lights Regional Christian Church, and multiple public school districts. Her most recent publications include contributions to the Journal of Religious Leadership (“Rewilding Religious Leadership: Engaging the ‘Big Book of Revelation’ for the Future”) and to Christ and Cascadia (“The Church Is an Organism: Redefining the Body of Christ as a Living System”).
Markell obtained her Doctor of Ministry from the Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry in 2019 and her Master of Divinity from Brite Divinity School. She also has a Master of Music degree from University of Missouri and enjoys partaking in the performing arts.
Michael Reid Trice
Spehar-Halligan Endowed Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement at Seattle University
Dr. Michael Reid Trice is the founder of Religica and editor-in-chief of the popular online journal, The Interfaith Observer both virtual and multimedia platforms that advance religious pluralism and healthy democracy in the world.
Trice’s first book, Encountering Cruelty, won the humanities award at Loyola University, Chicago. He participated on His Holiness, Pope Francis’ Vatican Covid-19 Commission through the Parliament of the World’s Religions, served as a fellow at the Science for Seminaries program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Among his scholarship, he recently co-edited two multi-author volumes with Georgetown University Press – Gratitude Injury, and Repair in a Pandemic Age (2025) and Discerning Leadership: Responsibility and Transformation (2027). Trice participates on national and international boards in his field and serves on the Multilateral Advisory Group on the UN Multifaith Advisory Council.
He teaches at both CEIE-SU and in the Center for Leadership Formation in Executive Leadership in the Executive MBA Program at the Albers School of Business and Economics, Seattle University.
Ready to Enroll?
Enroll in this on-demand course today or unlock free access to this and all Faith+Lead’s on-demand courses, plus more with a Faith+Lead Membership.
Enroll in this on-demand course
$55
One-time purchase
- Access to this on-demand course
- Access the leaders guide for group study
- Access the course workbook for individual study
- A private, supportive online community
- Public display license for all on-demand courses and workshop recordings
- Access to 40+ on-demand courses
- Access every live and recorded workshop
Popular
Access this on-demand course
$0*
*by joining Faith+Lead Membership for just $19.99 per month
- Access to this on-demand course
- Access to all 40+ on-demand courses
- Public display license for all on-demand courses and workshop recordings
- Access all leaders guides for group study
- Access all course workbooks for individual study
- A private, supportive online community
Need financial support?
Check out the newest courses
What to Expect with a Faith+Lead Academy Course
You’ll get a transformative learning experience that combines trustworthy theological teaching with spiritual practices, interactive elements, and a supportive online community.
Know
Expand your theological toolkit with fresh insights for today’s ministry landscape. Connect timeless wisdom with practical frameworks for navigating change.
Be
Do
Practice skills to lead confidently in your ministry context. Take actionable steps to invite your community into God’s unfolding story.
Every Academy course is designed to
Help your growth in one of these core areas:
Develop a Christ-centered identity, grounded in theology, scripture, and spiritual practice, that empowers community members to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in everyday life.
Tell the story of Jesus and invite neighbors into Jesus’ way of life and love through words and actions they can recognize.
Listen deeply, name God’s presence in the midst of everyday life, and form life-giving relationships across all dimensions of diversity—both within and beyond the church.
Through mutual relationships with the neighbors among whom you’re hosted, join in acts of compassion, justice, and reconciliation as a witness to the ministry of Jesus—especially in places of suffering and despair.
Harness skills of agile leadership, stewardship, fundraising, entrepreneurism, and management to be nimble enough to respond to a changing cultural landscape.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a partnership course?
This course was produced in cooperation with another organization. We shared the work of making the course and will share the course with our respective communities. Although you may see a few slight differences in the branding or the language, this course still provides the same structure and value as other Faith+Lead Academy courses.
What can I expect when I take an Academy course?
Academy courses consist of 6-10 lessons or modules, each walking you through the “know, be, do” learning framework. You’ll learn some new information with instructor videos and other resources (know). You’ll engage in a spiritual practice that will help you develop your faith around the topic (be). Then, you’ll be asked to apply what you’ve learned through activities completed online or in the “real world” (do).
How long will it take me to complete a course?
Each module is designed to take 15-45 minutes. Some learners complete the course in as little as one day. Some do a module a day or even a module a week. We suggest allowing some time between modules to process what you are learning, but not so much time that you lose momentum.
What resources are available if I’m a group leader?
Each course includes a flexible leader’s guide with multiple pathways for group facilitation. You’ll find thought-provoking discussion questions and practical activities that connect faith with daily life, designed to work with whatever preparation time you have available. These resources equip you to foster meaningful discipleship experiences that meet your community where they are.
What do I need to know about the free private online social group?
The private online group allows you to connect with others. Because our courses don’t have a required start or stop date, you will encounter others in different places in the course and even in different courses altogether. This is by design. Feel free to interact as much or as little as you like.
What should I do if I have questions or problems with my registration?
Reach out via email to faithlead@luthersem.edu with your question and we’ll get back to you with a response within two business days.
What if I have a suggestion or request for a course topic?
The best way to connect with us is to complete this form with your suggestion. We always want to hear your feedback. You may also include it in the comments section of the course evaluation.
Don’t see your question addressed?
Email us at support@faithlead.org for more information. We’ll be delighted to connect!